


Paradise Square

by Werelibrarian



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:08:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21788020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Werelibrarian/pseuds/Werelibrarian
Summary: Foggy walked past tenements that were dark and saloons that were not, past the Brewery and the gambling dens and boarded-up buildings. Filth and mud clung to his shoes, and even at this early hour, the streets stank like an overflowing cesspool. Horse shit and rotted food, mud and fetid stale beer and everywhere,everywhere, the stink of desperate unwashed humanity. How had he come to love such an unlovely place?In 1860s New York, where five dangerous and violent streets meet at a single point, a missionary crosses paths with a blind gangster.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 69





	1. Cross Street

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Poisonivory, on the occasion of her birthday.

The sun shone brilliantly on Five Points; was that God's grace or his greatest joke, that such a beautiful blue sky canopied the foulest, most squalid, depraved, violent, _darkest_ neighbourhood of New York? Inside a broken-down mission house on Cross Street, a reverend gazed through a broken pane of a window, as one of his missionaries rang a bell to call the wretches of the slum in to hear a sermon.

In the lower part of Manhattan, five streets came to a single point, and on each street, and in every little bend that curled off those streets, the poor and the criminal and the friendless scratched out a living. Some in tiny, fetid tenements and some in squats in abandoned buildings, such as the cavernous and terrifying Brewery. Those who couldn't afford even these loathsome abodes lived—well, tried not to die—in the alleys behind them.

At the junction of those five streets, there was a wide and spacious square—perversely called Paradise Square. It was strewn with broken things. Broken carts. Broken windows. Broken lives. Filthy street children, sloe-eyed pick-pockets and black-eyed prostitutes, gap-toothed men who gathered in clots in every doorway and somehow, with just the set of their shoulders and the jut of their jaw, telegraphed a willingness and even a pleasure to do violence. The streets themselves, as if understood by God and any man's sense of justice to be evil without chance of redemption, were sinking into the boggy land on which it stood, as if being slowly dragged to hell.

But Foggy Nelson, the newest head of the Five Points Charitable Mission, was going to lift the streets up with his bare hands and the convictions of his words, because they weren’t evil. There were no wretches in Five Points. Just the desperate, suffering in traps that the rich and well-fed could not imagine.

There were the Catholics that had come from Ireland by the shipload, and other immigrants with their own religions from Germany, China, and beyond. There were the freed slaves and the runaway slaves, with their understandable mistrust of white men. The women, whom men and men's power had used up and then discarded. The convicts and criminals who were told at every turn that they weren't worth saving. There were the gamblers and the prostitutes and the pick-pockets. The saloon keepers and the pimps and the head thieves. There were villains and victims both, peering out from behind the same set of eyes.

Mary came into the hall cradling the bell like a sick child. "I don't think anyone's coming today, Reverend."

"Thank you," Foggy sighed again. He'd been here seven days, and for seven days the pews sat empty. Mary curtsied fretfully and withdrew.

Foggy folded his hands together and rested his forehead on them, praying for strength and listening to the chatter outside. Then, as if God had heard his pleas and held a match to the wick of his spine, Foggy came around the rickety lectern with a resolve that nearly knocked it to the ground. He hoisted a chair and pushed open the door, planting the legs deep in the mud of Cross Street. He climbed up atop it, cleared his throat, and started to preach.

At first, people ignored him, even though his voice bounced off the sunken buildings and the shabby tenements. Then, as his words filled the square, the curious drew closer. Some children threw clots of mud at him, but others shushed them.

"…And God's love, my friends, is the—" Foggy faltered. Across the square, he could see a group of men box a woman against the doorway of a clapboard shack. "Is the—" They started to pull at her shawl and her skirt, laughing at her terror. "The grace that…Uh, sorry where was I? The grace that… Excuse me."

He jumped down from the chair and took off running. "Hey! Hey!" When the men turned at the sound of his voice, expressions rageful, Foggy pushed past them and grabbed the woman's arm. "You are late for work. Be late again and you'll lose your position. Get inside," he barked and pushed her towards the Missions' steps. Her wide eyes went suspicious, then understanding, and when he prodded her again, gently this time, her eyes were bright with gratitude.

When he turned back to the men, the fist across the jaw did not surprise him. The hatchet under his chin—that did.

"You've picked the wrong street to play big man on," the blade-wielder said. Foggy could see that he and his friends wore the colours of the Kerryonian Gang, and even if he couldn't have seen, he could hear County Kerry threaded thickly through their voice as fat through bacon.

The Irish gangs held Five Points together just as much as their warring threatened to blow it all apart, and they were as many in name as books of the bible. The Plug Uglies. The Shirt-tails. The Forty Thieves. The Chichesters. They warred with the native-born American gangs like the Bowery Boys and the O'Connell Gang and the Atlantic Guards, and when that bored them, they warred with each other.

"I'm a man of God," Foggy said, voice trembling.

"I'm not," the Kerryonian said gleefully. Foggy braced himself, but just as a killing blow should have struck him, a quiet, almost genteel clearing of the throat made the Kerryonian freeze. "Auw feck," he muttered, his gaze drifting over Foggy's shoulder. Foggy whipped around.

In appearance, the man leaning against the stone wall was no different than any other man of Five Points—a grubby, once-white shirt under a pair of leather braces and a dreadfully patched waistcoat. Mud-caked canvas trousers and dilapidated boots. A faded neckcloth around his throat and a newsboy's cap worn artfully crooked over sin-dark hair. 

But his poor clothing couldn't conceal the fact that this man was not remotely like other men of the neighbourhood, for even though his eyes were hidden behind dark spectacles, and even though they were hidden, something gave Foggy the feeling that they saw everything—Foggy, the hatchet, the sweat creeping down Foggy's back, the secrets Foggy hadn't dared even speak in prayer. He had a cane resting jauntily on his shoulder. And he was smiling.

The Kerryonians started to edge backwards with a studied casualness, thumbs hooked in their waistbands and hats pulled down low. One of them whistled a gob of spittle through the gap in his teeth, and it landed on Foggy's boot.

Foggy's saviour stabbed his cane into the ground. "Hey now," he admonished, though it sounded more like _hiey naioe_. "None of that, lads, none of that." He spun his cane dextrously over his dirty-nailed fingers and the Kerryonians took off running. "Forgive the poor welcome to the neighbourhood, Reverend." He raised his hand to his cap, his mouth tipped up on one side. 

"Who are you?" Foggy demanded.

"Matt Murdock," the blind man said, bowing slightly over his cane.

"And what are you?"

"What am I?"

Foggy waved a hand at where the Kerryonians had stood. It was trembling slightly. "To which gang do you belong?"

"None of them."

That was impossible. No one who stood up in Five Points as proudly as this Murdock character lacked for an army at his back. "None?"

"Or all."

"That's nonsense."

"I've many alliances. Or none. It depends on the day."

"I see," Foggy said. Terror, slow to melt away, made him mouthy. "Monday, you're a Roach Guard. Tuesday, Shirt-tails. Wednesday, the Plug Uglies. Do I have the right of it?"

"You're a fast learner. The Slaughter Housers on Thursday and the Daybreak Boys have me of a Friday, aye. I keep Saturdays for myself." Murdock said, smirking.

"And Sunday?" Foggy snorted.

"Sundays, I could be yours, if you wanted me."

Foggy froze. "What?"

Murdock's smirk grew. "Sunday sermons? You've a mission to bring souls to your church, don't you, Reverend?"

"Oh, of course. Indeed." He rubbed at his neck, and a thin line of blood came away on his palm. "Indeed," he said, and pushed past. He felt Murdock's smile trail him, even after he slammed shut the mission’s door.


	2. Anthony Street

There was an art to serving soup they didn't teach at seminary school, Foggy realized, as he splashed himself to the elbow with the turnipy broth. Flora, the woman he'd separated from the Kerryonians a month ago, gave his wet shirt a baleful look. "The broth what gone into that soup wasn't cheap, you know," she remonstrated.

"I know," Foggy sighed back, nodding at the dirty-faced boy who was next in the queue. "It's just that there's a lip on the ladle that takes me by surprise every time." As if illustrating, half the soup meant to go into the boy's bowl (a Swamp Angel, but a young one, holding his hat in his hands politely) sloshed all over the table. The Swamp Angel lad's face fell, and he held out a resigned hand for the mostly empty bowl.

"Enough of your nonsense, Reverend," Flora said briskly. She pushed him aside with her hip and filled the soup bowl almost to the brim. The young Swamp Angel's face lit up. Chastened, Foggy lamely topped the bowl with a slice of brown bread.

Foggy watched the boy elbow a space free at one of the benches and stuff his face as if the food would blow away in a breeze. When he picked up the bowl to lick it clean, a neighbour's fingers stole across the table towards the bread. Just as the crust was about to disappear into the thief's grip, another hand clamped this wrist to the table.

"Don't you be a fool, Billy," Murdock said mildly, as the bread thief tried to throw his head back into Murdock's stomach. Those old-world syllables, again, kissing Foggy's ears. "Not over half a piece of bread." Murdock shifted his body, and light glinted off a slim dirk in his other hand, the wicked point of which was tracing a curl around the Billy's ear.

If you asked ten residents of Five Points where Matt Murdock's allegiances lay, you'd get a dozen answers. All the people Foggy asked, they swore that they feared Murdock, yet they loved him with the same breath. They sighed over his beauty, calling him Handsome Matty, or they showed Foggy the scars he'd given them when they'd crossed him. They told stories of his viciousness, or they told stories of how they would be rotting in the dirt if he'd not come to their rescue.

So it was merely the mystery, surely, that attracted Foggy so. The enigma of a man who somehow stood above the network of gangs and violence while still being respected as one who operated within it. The fascination of a real life penny-press villain married to the alluring heart-glow of a man trying to do good in a bad place. After all, Foggy's vocation was to nurture goodness wherever he found it. That was the reason, wasn't it? A desire to encourage the potential for virtue in Matt Murdock. Please God, let that be it. 

Billy surrendered with only a growl and a poisonous glare, and it felt like the entire room exhaled a sigh of relief, but afterwards, Foggy couldn't blink away the pleased, predatory look on Murdock's face as he balanced all of Billy's remaining days on the point of his knife.

***

"Here, you better eat." A bowl of soup and a slab of bread landed on the empty table next to Foggy's accounting ledger. A few stragglers idled in the dining hall, dozing or talking quietly as the kitchen girls laughed and clanged the soup pots around in their washbasins in the yard.

"Later," Foggy said, drawing a line under his figures and sighing. He would definitely have to pay the bank another visit and withdraw a little more from his personal account; money was running away from the Mission like water. 

"Now," Flora ordered. "You can keep this one company."

Foggy looked up. Matt Murdock eased himself onto the bench across from Foggy, and another bowl was placed unceremoniously in front of him. 

"Thank you, Miss Flora," Murdock said, all gentlemanly courtesy.

"Shove it up your arse," Flora said, just as sweetly.

"Reverend," Murdock said, digging in.

"Mr. Murdock," Foggy replied, scribbling.

"I recall you've been told to eat." Murdock said. "Reverend? Come now—"A hand dropped lightly over his wrist, and Foggy started violently, eyes casting about for the blade and his heart thudding suddenly in his chest. Murdock's brow wrinkled. "What is it?" He was shocked. Foggy couldn't make a sound, his throat squeezing. Fingers clamping down hard, Murdock reared up over Foggy, upending the bench. "Are you afraid of me?" he demanded.

"No," Foggy lied. He stared at his own face reflected in the red spectacles of likely the most deadly man in Five Points. He wondered how many men had died seeing exactly this.

After a long moment where Foggy was deafened by what he feared were his last heartbeats, Murdock snatched up his cane and stalked out of doors.

That night, as Foggy dazedly and exhaustedly struggled off his coat in the tiny attic room he called his bedchamber, the touch of a helping hand on the shoulder made him strangle a shout, and he flailed his fists as he whirled, only to have them be neatly captured in Matt Murdock's grip. "Easy now, it's a friend," Murdock said soothingly.

"I flatter myself to think I do a measure of good work here," Foggy growled, pulling away and putting a hand over his apoplectic heart. "I thought you might agree." His arms were still trapped in his sleeves and there was a level of give in the fabric that felt suspiciously like a split seam.

"I do!"

"Then why do you seek to startle me to death?" Foggy snapped. "How did you get in here, anyway?"

Unexpectedly, Murdock touched his mouth to smother a smile. "Shall I fetch a dram of brandy to soothe your nerves?

Foggy tried to wave his arm. "Just help me out of this fucking thing. And none of your sauce," he said, as Murdock's face shaded to amused.

"I would never," Murdock said in wry solemnity, and worked the coat down Foggy's arms hard enough to rend another seam.

When the blasted garment puddled at Foggy's feet, he felt a gentle touch at his jaw and he hissed his breath on the inhale. "What…what are you doing?"

Murdock traced around the back of Foggy's ear, the same path he'd drawn with his knife when Billy had stolen the bread. "Do you loathe it?"

Murdock's hands were rough but his touch was soft. Wordlessly, Foggy shook his head.

"A cut right here, and you would bleed your life away," Murdock remarked vaguely, tapping the pulse that throbbed at the side of Foggy's throat.

"Are you going to cut me?" Foggy whispered.

Murdock was still running his fingers along Foggy's skin, slipping into Foggy's hair. "I should, for the grave insult you paid me today."

"What insult?"

"You started like a kicked dog when I touched you."

"The entire city knows who you are," Foggy said, suddenly breathless. "And what you can do. It respects you. Should I not do the same?" God forgive him, that was a hairsbreadth away from an outright untruth; he respected the notorious gangster without question, but Foggy's heart was an overgrown garden of feelings, tangled and thorny and too untamed for a bland word such as respect.

"You were afraid of me."

"I said I wasn't."

Murdock's grip tangled in Foggy's hair, tipping his head back and exposing his throat.

"You were lying."

"Five Points made you." It was the only explanation Foggy could give. The streets made folk to be hard of spirit and ready to defend themselves. To wish that they weren't that way was to wish them dead.

"And so I'm a monster?"

Foggy clasped Murdock's arm. "Never."

"The entire city can cower before me; it should. I don't care. But you—" Murdock growled, like the words were barbed, cutting him as they came out. "The thought of you being afraid of me…I despise it."

Foggy pushed up on his toes before his courage failed him, and Murdock, whose hands were so adept with blades and brickbats and clubs, met him halfway. Kissing Murdock was candle flame and house fire both. A soft glow. An all-devouring blaze.

"I'm not afraid of you now," Foggy said, his lips brushing Murdock's as he spoke.

"Reverend—"

"Foggy. It's Foggy." He watched as his fingers clenched themselves in the rough, threadbare fabric of Murdock's shirt.

Every night in Five Points was someone's last, and as Murdock beamed and repeated Foggy's name in his beautiful Irish vowels, and as they kissed the inches of the candle down to nothing, someone out on the street was starving to death, or falling under a hail of blows, or just succumbing to the hardships that humankind never stopped inventing for each other.

"Stop," Foggy said suddenly, easing Matt's weight off him and scooting a safe distance away. "I can't. I have work to do, I can't—spare the time."

Matt pushed up on his elbows and ran his tongue around his reddened mouth. He snagged his spectacles with a hooked finger and pocketed them. "What work can be done in the dead of night? Well, lots of different work, but none fit for the likes of you."

"I spend an hour with you, I rise an hour later, that's an hour where God's word is not being spread to people who may need it."

"I only get an hour?" Matt said, drawing Foggy close by the ends of his belt and kissing his chest.

"You _are_ the devil," Foggy breathed, and Matt laughed against his skin.

"You won't change the neighbourhood in an hour, Reverend," Matt said. "Believe me, dearest. I would know."

Foggy sighed. "I know you're right, but…"

"Then sleep with me," Matt interrupted, kissing Foggy roughly when he snorted in derision. "Actually sleep. You'll wake fresh as a daisy come morning, ready to save souls."

"And you?"

Matt drew Foggy towards the bed with an open smile, and Foggy's knees trembled at the warmth of it. "I'll wake next to a man who's stolen my blackened Five Points heart, and I'll thank whichever God you'd like to name for the good fortune."


	3. Little Water Street

Matt couldn't be seen to spend too much time around the Mission house, lest it appear that the meanest dog in the city aspired to have a silk bow around his neck and to nap lazily next to a dowager's fireplace. Instead, he showed up in Foggy's attic room at all hours of the day and night, and Foggy would make excuses that he was up there alone, composing sermons.

"We shouldn't be doing this," Foggy panted at the ceiling. "I've got things to attend to. The day-school needs slates and the workhouse deliveries are nearly ready, and the water-pump on Orange Street is putting forth sludge again."

Matt's head emerged from underneath the blanket. "Must you mention sludge at such a delicate moment?"

"Oh, sorry my darling," Foggy said, pulling Matt up by the back of the neck and licking into his mouth. "I forgot about your refined sensibilities."

"You work too much anyway," Matt murmured, letting himself be rolled under, "the priests I knew in Ireland ate beef and drank tea and fell asleep in their studies."

"I have to, I can hear the crying," Foggy gasped as he slotted between Matt's spread thighs.

Everything stopped then—Matt's mischievous face gone slack, Foggy's heavy breaths stilling. Slowly, Matt pulled him down and kissed him like he was making a promise. "Yes, I understand completely."

***

"Mary, I'm back," Foggy called, squelching into the Mission with his sodden jacket draped over his arm. "And the water-pump is cleared."

"Foggy," Flora hissed at him, and gestured frantically. Nonplussed, he waved back at her and continued his watery trail deeper into the house.

"Reverend Nelson," an icy voice greeted him. 

"Mrs. Yeager!" Foggy said. Water plinked on the floorboards as the silence stretched out. "What a pleasure. Please make yourself comfortable in my office. I'll find some dry clothes."

Mrs. Yeager, moving like the oncoming prow of a battleship, looked down her nose at him but allowed herself to be ushered away.

Foggy stripped on his way up to the attic and struggled to fasten his braces on the way down, but when he pushed into the office, his attire was roughly in the right arrangement. "I'm so pleased you came to visit us," he said breathlessly. "I would be honoured to give you a tour, so that you can see all our many projects; your ladies are truly marvels and I think we're doing exceptional work—"

"How many have converted?" Mrs. Yeager interrupted.

Foggy blinked. "Beg pardon?"

"How many souls have you saved by bringing them to the church?"

"Well, many come to the church for help and guidance. For example, um. We feed three score per day, and nearly a hundred men have found jobs because we set up a workhouse to teach them factory skills. The women, we're helping them too—they're getting jobs in service in some of the best neighbourhoods in New York. Children are learning to read, and staying away from the gangs, and—"

"You can't name a single person, can you?"

"Mrs. Yeager, when I arrived here, it was very quickly evident that what people needed, even before the gospel, was safety, and food, and a solution to the sin of debauchery and vice. That is the wound I sought to heal first."

"That is not the job the mission gave you."

A rage was bubbling up in Foggy's stomach. "No, I think that's the job God gave me."

"Then God can give you your next employment," Mrs Yeager snapped, drawing herself up. "I've heard reports that you give two sermons a week, at best. The board of directors and I consider that grossly insufficient. And I come here expecting some sort of explanation, and instead I find you completely unrepentant at how much time and money you waste on…material things."

"Material things? Food! Shelter! Safety!"

"None of which are within the purview of this Mission."

"Then I should ignore how these people suffer in life?"

"Lives end," Mrs. Yeager said, gathering up her skirts and sweeping out the door. "Souls are eternal. I suggest you pay attention to what counts in the final reckoning."

***

Matt threw open the door before Foggy had a chance to knock. "Are you insane? This is the Brewery. You could have been murdered ten times between the front gate and this room."

"I brought an axe." Foggy held it up, pointlessly, but Matt just let his jaw hang.

"Where did _you_ get—"

"It's from the woodpile at the Mission. Are you going to invite me in?"

Matt's mouth worked grumpily. "Karen!"

A blonde woman in a shawl poked her head into the apartment. She had a birdlike face and a darting glance that pegged her to Foggy eyes as pickpocket, and a good one. "Aye?"

"I need a candle."

She snorted. "Give me a penny for it."

Before Matt could bluster, Foggy held out a nickel. "I appreciate the favour, miss."

"What generosity. You can come around more often," her voice simpered as she slapped a candle and a box of matches into his hand, but her eyes dared him to take the invitation seriously at his own peril.

The room was not rendered any more salubrious when Foggy filled it with light. In fact, it was a harrowing little hovel that let in both wind and starlight while managing to be cramped and airless. Matt's bed was not much more than a cot frame with rags heaped atop it, and his spare clothing hung from the sharp ends where the timbers of the wall had cracked and splintered. The corners of the floor held piles of dirt and cobwebs, and a rancid beer-scented grime clung to everything else. 

"What's the matter?" Matt demanded.

Foggy stroked back Matt's hair and turned his jaw back and forth, watching the shadows play over his features. "I just wanted to see your smile."

"It's good for more than just looking at, you know," Matt said with a smirk, and Foggy bent to taste it. It went on like that for a while, then Matt got up to turn a lock on the rickety door, and then it went on for quite a bit longer.

***

After, when Foggy had his face smashed lovingly against Matt's chest in a contented doze, he felt one his hands being picked up and kissed. "Are you short of food?" When Foggy came up with only an interrogative mumble, Matt added, "your hands shake."

"No, I keep the mission supplied," Foggy said, not opening his eyes.

"Are you ill?"

"No."

Then why?" Matt's lips travelled along his palm and down his wrist, causing more shivers.

Foggy smiled into Matt's skin. "Your charms?"

"No, that can't be it." Matt said amiably. "Come down and eat."

"I won't eat your food, Matt."

"You gave Karen a nickel for a penny candle. I'm sure you'll think of some way to repay us tomorrow."

When Matt had told Foggy that he ran with every gang in Five Points, or none, as the case may have been, Foggy had scoffed at it for a lie. Looking at the company Matt kept now, perhaps he'd been uncharitable. Matt's friends were Irish and German, Blacks and Asians, men and women. Immigrant and Native. Every sort that New York squashed together in its clammy, stifling grip. And they lived, somehow, without killing each other in the Brewery, which was spoken of as a notorious place, where someone was found murdered nearly every morning. Foggy knew it was true, and that no good would come from thinking that the riotous, companionable atmosphere of Matt and his friends (and some of his enemies) laughing and insulting each other as they ate, made the hard and precarious lives that they and other Five Pointers lead somehow worth it. 

But Matt and his friends laughed and ate, and drank, and gambled and fought and danced, a warm flame that burned amid the squalor and hunger and the cold, and Foggy could almost, almost forget what he was here to do.

When he'd eaten all that they'd pushed at him, his hands still shook, so he pulled Matt into a corner and told him of Mrs. Yeager’s ultimatum.

"Close down—what, everything?" Matt said, appalled. "The workhouses, the school?"

"And the kitchen. I'm here to preach, not make soup."

"Does this woman not know that's the only meal some see in a day?" Matt growled. "Alright then, don't take her money anymore, you can pay for it yourself. I'll help. I know people who can steal it—we'll hit her house first."

"I already pay for the kitchen myself," Foggy sighed. "It's not the money, Matt."

"Then what?"

The sigh felt like it came from Foggy's guts, weary and helpless. "Minister to the soul, not the body."

"That's—" Insane. Foolish. _Heartless._

"I know."

"Foggy, dearest, please tell me you don't agree with this."

"Of course I don't, but they'll replace me if I don't run the mission the way they want."

Matt's lips became a white line and he stepped back. "I never thought you a coward before, Reverend." The distance between them could have been no more than a few feet, yet it felt like the width of an ocean.


	4. Orange Street

Foggy wished there had been _some_ outcry when the workhouse closed and the teachers for the day school had been sent away. He wished that the residents of Five Points had pounded on his door, demanded an explanation, called him a traitor or threatened his life. They just turned a dead, accepting look at Foggy and the other missionaries and dissolved back into the chaos of Five Points.

"Do you think you're the first missionary to turn your back on them?" Matt asked, without much sympathy. _On us_ , went unspoken.

Foggy did what he could. He spent the day visiting tenements and cramped rooms. He held babies and stirred pots and helped old men hobble to the privies. And try as he might, when a mother was weeping at a barren table or a lad raging at the death of his brother, Foggy couldn't bring himself to suggest that speaking their prayers to a different faith would be the thing that turned it all around.

Some folk still came to the mission, especially on cold days, and he tacked as close to the wind as he dared by running all his illegal programs—the soup kitchen, the day school, the workhouse—out of the church hall under the guise of giving sermons, until Mrs. Yeager sent a rabbit-eyed missionary to take up the warm spot by the furnace and make a daily report of what Foggy had preached. 

So Foggy waited by the lectern again and listened to Mary ringing the bell. The window that had been broken before was mended now. 

Some months past, on a warm and bright day, some of the lads who had left the Roach Guards had helped Foggy take apart all the broken casements in the mission and put in new panes of glass while Matt had leaned against the wall and heckled. He'd been idle and useless the entire day nursing a broken rib, but that night, in Foggy's room, Matt had led him over to the attic's new window and bade him draw their initials on the dew that condensed on the glass.

It was turning towards winter now, and Matt hadn't come around since Foggy started preaching full time. The few times he'd ventured into the Brewery, all those friends who had joked with him over supper turned him away. 

"I've been ringing for ten minutes," Mary said tightly. Norbert, Mrs. Yeager's spy, sucked on his teeth and made a note in his book.

"Thank you, Mary," Foggy said. Again, he put his head down on the lectern for strength, and again he flew out the mission doors with a chair hefted over his shoulder.

"Reverend, what are you doing?" Norbert called.

Foggy shoved the chair into the mud and climbed up. "Brothers and sisters," he boomed, "the grace of God shines on you—"

Some of the passing residents murmured greetings as they trudged past, weighed down by burdens that Foggy was allowed to talk at but not lift. "And the church welcomes you, who will take the first step to secure heaven for your soul?"

Across the square, some men were holding up the edge of a tenement's crumbling roof as others struggled to prop it up with scavenged lumber. Foggy realized he'd been watching the men work, silently, for some seconds, and Norbert was glaring at him.

"Oh, to hell with it," Foggy said, stripping off his coat to lend his back to the cause.

***

Even though a person could walk from the slums to the fashionable neighbourhoods in about thirty minutes, it took Norbert's letter two days to reach Mrs. Yeager, and another day for her to storm Five Points with the board of directors and a clutch of lawyers at her back.

Foggy heard them tromping up the stone steps of the Mission, but he had Mrs. Shannon's youngest child Sarah in his lap, and she was one sounded-out vowel away from reading the word "jackrabbit" for the first time, so he didn't even look up from her book.

Someone cleared a throat politely, but Sarah was still struggling, so he raised a finger to forestall them while she worked it over.

"Reverend Nelson," someone said, far less politely.

"One moment, please! Look at the other letters in the line," Foggy said encouragingly.

"B-b-i-t. Buh-It. Bit. Jackrabbit!"

"Well done!" Foggy cried, and lifted her off. "Go show your mother." He dusted off his lap and gave the assembled masses a sunny smile. "Good morning ladies, gentlemen. Welcome to Five Points."

***

Flora, a daughter of German immigrants, had been born near Corlear's Hook. When her father had died, her family had fallen into desperation and as a child she had run with a thief's gang. As she grew, she kept herself out of the brothels by turning to a most brazen form of thievery: burglarizing the mansions of Fifth Avenue by wearing a maid's uniform and slipping in during the chaos of party preparations. Mary, on the other hand, had been born into a middle class Methodist family in upstate New York, and had been schooled and trained towards prudence, uprightness, and godliness for all her life.

So when Foggy opened his office door and Mrs. Yeager's battalion filed out, the fact that Mary had unrepentantly been listening at the keyhole and Flora had been across the room, cringing at the crime—that was just the grimy magic of New York, changing people who thought themselves past change.

"They fired me," Foggy said finally, when the rest of the staff had been hastily assembled. "Reverend Norbert is now the head of the mission. I'll be leaving tomorrow morning. "

Flora started to cry, and Mary curled an arm around her shoulders.

"Serve him well," Foggy ordered his staff, through a tight throat. "Serve God. Serve the people of Five Points. And you'll do right by me."

That night, Foggy burned his candle down to a nub, writing and waiting. Mostly waiting.

A little past midnight, the candle guttered entirely, plunging the room into a moonless darkness, and Foggy sighed and reached for the matches. The spark of the head bursting into flame hurt his eyes, and he almost dropped the damn thing because standing next to his open window was Matt.

"Jesus Ch—" Foggy started, and then clamped down on his fear. "That was _most_ unnecessary," he scolded. Then he got a better look. Matt's spectacles and cane were missing and he was bleeding from the nose and lip. When he reached for Foggy, weakly, like standing upright was a trial, his knuckles were bloodied and scraped. "Matt. You're hurt!"

"I'm fine," Matt said. "I heard—"

Foggy made Matt sit on the bed and dabbed at his face. "Yes, it's all done and dusted. Be nice to Reverend Norbert when I'm gone."

"I'll do nothing of the kind," Matt said, catching Foggy's wrist. "You're the heart and soul of this place, Foggy, how could they think just to remove you?"

"There's a position for me in San Francisco."

Matt's face went utterly slack. "No."

"No, there really is."

"You can't," Matt choked. His face was cracked and close to tears, and his lip started to ooze sluggish blood once more. "Foggy, you'd leave?"

"Not much choice, Matt," Foggy said simply. Under the blood, the cuts were already healing, but he kissed Matt's knuckles, just to speed it along. "Who's warring tonight?"

"The Bowery Boys, the Atlantic Guard—all the Irish-haters. They're making accords between themselves and it's only a matter of weeks before they're coming for anyone born on foreign soil."

That would be so much more than a simple dustup over territory. That would be _carnage_. But Matt was still sitting on the bed, shoulders slumped and eyes inconsolably sad, so a war on the horizon was a problem for another day.

"I was blessed to have known you," Foggy said through a tight throat, palming Matt’s sallow cheek. "You taught me that sometimes, it is right to fight. "

"And yet you abandon Five Points?"

"What else could I do? Move into the Brewery? Join one of the gangs?"

"Of course not! But Foggy—" Lost for words, Matt gripped Foggy's shirt, cloth twisting angrily in his fists.

"I love you," Foggy whispered, covering Matt's hands with his own. "Matt, I _love_ you. But I have to be useful." Matt's mouth dropped open with a lost sound, and then they were kissing. Harshly, bloodily, with the pain of understanding. "Sleep with me tonight," Foggy said, when they broke apart.

Matt nodded, a bit frantically. "Yes, love. Yes."

***

Hours later, after Matt dropped off to sleep, Foggy stared at the square of sky slowly lightening through the window, and on the turn of dawn, he dressed and went out of the Mission.

He walked past tenements that were dark and saloons that were not, past the Brewery and the gambling dens and boarded-up buildings where businesses had been tried and failed. Filth and mud clung to his shoes, and even at this early hour, the streets stank like an overflowing cesspool. Horse shit and rotted food, mud and fetid stale beer and everywhere, _everywhere_ , the stink of desperate unwashed humanity.

How had he come to love such an unlovely place? He thought of Matt, dead asleep and flat on his front with but a corner of the blankets preserving his modesty, and told himself perhaps he simply had a knack for falling in love in such a way.

Foggy stood looking at one boarded-up building for a long time. It was shabby and broken-windowed, but wasn't too badly sinking. The door had a fresher coat of paint on it than the rest of the house, and when Foggy stepped up to it and ran his coat cuff over the doorknob, bright brass shined up at him. He knocked on a surprisingly solid window casement and listened to the way the boards of the step bore his weight without creaking.

Perhaps not everything in Five Points was broken, and what was—well, what was could still be mended.

As the pink light of dawn started to glow around the outline of the dilapidated building, he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked back to his first Mission, where Matt was naked and waiting for him in bed, and he started to whistle.

***

"You get me out of bed before dawn, you drag me into the cold—this is no way to treat someone you love," Matt groused as Foggy towed him along the street.

"Shhh, we're here."

"Here where?"

Foggy made them stop and took Matt's hand. "Here. You know the streets better than any soul in Five Points. Where are we?"

"Mulberry Street, not far from the bend."

"What's in front of us?"

Matt sniffed. "Smells like flour. The old bakery."

"It's empty," Foggy said, barely able to keep from bouncing on his feet.

"Yes? "

"I think Reverend Norbert will improve in his new position if we give him a bit of competition."

Matt sighed and rubbed his face. "Foggy, it’s too early for riddles. Just speak plain, love, for my sanity."

"I'm going to open my own mission here," Foggy said. Matt blinked at him, eyebrows rising high over his glasses. "What do you think?"

Instead of answering, Matt scooped Foggy into his arms and kissed him, right there on the street, in front of all of New York, or at least that portion of New York that had not yet gone to bed.


	5. Mullberry Street

War was coming. The Nativist American gangs—fired by a hatred of immigrants, Catholics, foreigners, black folk, anyone who was different—they were readying, and soon they would sweep through Five Points like a wave. Foggy could smell the threat of it in the air like the smoke from a distant battle.

For days now, more and more families were sleeping in the Mission. Norbert had received reminders from Mrs. Yeager that the Mission was not to be used as a boarding house, but he threw the letter into the fire and ordered Mary to buy as many blankets as they could afford.

The residents of the neighbourhood were also sheltering in the newest mission, which was called the Five Points House, and in whose boarded up front room Reverend Foggy Nelson was calming a score of people trying to get out of the way of the war.

"Foggy!" Matt burst in the front door, making women gasp and children shriek. "Sorry, it's alright, is the Reverend here?"

"How bad is it?" Foggy demanded, wading through the room and chivying Matt out onto the stoop, away from the terrified civilians. 

"Bad, but it'll be worse without us," Matt said, taking his hand. That's when Foggy saw that Matt had his army at his back—it looked like he'd picked one from every gang in Five Points. There was Karen, and several folk Foggy recognized from dining at the Brewery. Some he'd not seen before.

"Stay safe," he ordered all of them, and they nodded back before heading towards the direction of the fighting.

"It's time for you to get inside," Matt said, urgency in his voice. "I'll guard the door."

"You just said you're needed in the fight."

"I need to be here."

Foggy snorted. "I'll protect the House. You protect the rest of the neighbourhood."

"They'll be armed."

"I'm aware," Foggy said, digging in the woodpile until he came away with an axe. "I'm armed too."

"I thought the bible had a word or two to say about the subject of killing," Matt said, voice amused.

"It does," Foggy said, swinging experimentally. "But it's blessedly silent on the topic of kneecaps."

"My God, how I love you," Matt said dreamily.

"I love you too. Now go teach those bastards what immigrants are made of," Foggy said, but Matt just stood there, doe-eyed behind his spectacles. "What are you waiting for, a kiss?"

Matt spun his cane. "Is one on offer?"

Foggy barked a laugh. "Will you fight for your people?"

Matt quirked an eyebrow. "I will."

"Will you fight for our home?"

Matt swallowed, and when he spoke his voice was rough. "I will."

Foggy grabbed him by the neck cloth and hauled their mouths together. "Will you fight for your love?" he panted, when they broke apart.

"Jesus Mary and Joseph, I'd die for you," Matt said savagely.

Foggy kissed him again, and shouted after him as he ran towards the fighting. "Not today, you won’t. The sun's shining on Five Points, and I have faith."


End file.
